Vehicle interiors may be equipped with any of a variety of types of accent lighting. For instance, lighting modules may be built into an overhead ceiling panel, door panel, console panel, or instrument panel. Such lighting modules typically require an opening in the panel to be installed therein and/or require sufficient space behind the panel to accommodate lighting module components that are desired to be hidden from view. A vehicle interior panel with such a lighting module installed can have a pieced-together look—i.e., it is noticeable that the accent lighting is produced by a separately installed piece. Attempts have been made to produce more integrated accent lighting for vehicle interior panels, but the available options are limited and problematic, especially where the visible panel surface has a non-planar, three-dimensional contour.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,470,388 to Zsinko et al. discloses a so-called conformal electroluminescent system that includes multiple layers of materials sprayed one on top of the other. The system relies largely on an electrically conductive backplane material formed from a sprayed-on conductive paint that contains a high concentration of highly conductive metal particles. One example of such a paint disclosed by Zsinko is Silvaspray™ (Caswell, Inc., Lyons, N.Y., USA), which contains a high concentration of silver. The Zsinko system is generally cost-prohibitive due to this reliance on expensive metal content. In addition, the painting process is characterized by a high scrap rate, as uniformly thick and defect-free paint films can be difficult to achieve, especially when the paint has such a high metal content.